Cold War
by Sister Coyote
Summary: Not all allies are true allies. Not all masks are false masks. Sephiroth, Tseng. Gen.


When they asked him, Sephiroth said that he knew little of Wutai. Intellectually, he was aware of a country of temples and statues, and a rich culture. In his time there, however, he had seen nothing of it but battlefields: the ancient hills nothing but problems for siege and line-of-sight, the vast green fields churned with mud and blood, cracked with the aftereffects of fire and thunder and ice spells.

All battlefields were alike. It made no difference what ocean one crossed, what national borders one stood within. He did not know Wutai any better than he knew the moon.

* * *

When they asked him, Tseng said that he knew little of Wutai. His parents were Wutaian, but he had not yet been born when they had moved to Midgar, to the ghetto under Sector Five, the expanse of blocks between the Highstreet Canal and Red Lion Way. They tried to teach him the old ways when he was a child, and he absorbed some of it, but as an adolescent he saw his escape in the ways of Midgar and not in his parents' culture.

He could not have explained why, even so, he kept his caste and clan marks.

* * *

To the outside world, the SOLDIER program and the Turks were part of the same deadly mechanism of power, distinguished only by the types of threats they were called to deal with.

Within the halls of the Tower, Sephiroth knew that the program for which he was the prototype was a challenge to the Turks. He knew—because they did not watch what they said around him—that their funding had been cut to provide the seed money for the first SOLDIERs.

It only made sense, he thought. They were the past. He and his luminous-eyed underlings were the future.

* * *

"Wutaian," said a voice behind him, and Tseng stiffened.

"Yes," he said, and turned, and—General Sephiroth's expression bore nothing but distant curiosity, no rancor or disdain, as far as Tseng could read, which was not well.

"I saw little of your country," Sephiroth said. "A shame."

"I have seen none of it," Tseng said.

"Ah?"

"I am Wutaian by blood only," he said. It was not quite true—he knew the language, the cuisine, the customs—but it was true enough.

Sephiroth looked as though he had suddenly grown vastly less interesting. "I see," he said, and swept on.

* * *

Sephiroth saw them on the firing range—Tseng aiming and firing in rapid successing, Reno tossing his weapon from hand to hand, laughing, firing sideways, or over his shoulder. They were very good—they were extremely accurate—and yet . . .

"They do not revere their weapons," he said to his aide.

"No sir," said the retainer.

"Or their martial skills. They have no respect for it. It is a tool for them, like an axe or a crowbar. Nothing more."

The retainer said nothing.

"I had hoped for more from that one, but he is not of his people."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

Few men would address General Sephiroth when they had not been addressed by him first. That was why Tseng did so.

"General," he said.

Sephiroth turned slowly, his hair shifting over his shoulder, his eyes long and cool. "Yes?"

"Congratulations on the victory at Denai."

Sephiroth blinked slowly and nodded. "Thank you, Tseng."

"A shame direct conflict could not have been avoided," Tseng continued, all mildness and innocence. Sometimes his youthful training still held him in good stead. "I understand we lost two battalions in the explosion."

"Sometimes it is not wise to play one's hand too cautiously," Sephiroth said.

* * *

"Nibelheim?" Hojo's mouth quirked up. Sephiorth felt a flare of disgust and stifled it; he had once looked up to Hojo as lord of his steel-and-glass domain, but now he saw only the neuroses that twitched and shuddered beneath his skin. "Perhaps I will follow. There are items of interest to me still, there."

Sephiroth's mouth compressed. "Have the Turks failed to locate the girl who had you so interested?"

"The Ancient?" Hojo snorted. "Wherever that chit is hiding, they can't seem to find her."

Sephiroth's eyes narrowed. Were they so incompetent, or was this some political game? "A pity."

* * *

It did not surprise Tseng that it should come to this. In open conflict with Sephiroth and SOLDIER and all they stood for, Turks would inevitably lose. They only had a chance as long as they could operate with subterfuge.

It did surprise him how much it hurt, the steel going into his stomach; he had been shot before, burned, beaten, stabbed, but never like this, with each heartbeat pulsing his life out over his hands.

In some ways the worst of it was that Sephiroth was not even angry. His cold eyes said that he simply did not care.

* * *

Sephiroth wondered at how little his rivalry mattered anymore. Funding? Competence? Respect? The future? It was all irrelevant. It was irrelevant what Shinra thought; it was irrelevant whether Tseng had lived or died; it was irrelevant whether the other Turks would try to aid him or get in his way. The world was fire—the world was burning down—and he would be there to help it. He would be there to light the pyre, fan the flames, scatter the ashes.

It was all irrelevant next to Mother.

He wondered how he had ever thought that it could be important.

* * *

Tseng drifted in and out of coherence, through the haze of pain medication, until one day he woke up and there was no red light through the window.

"Meteor's gone," Reno said. "And _he_'s dead." His eyes were like bruises.

"Good riddance," Elena spat, acid with the anger that Tseng knew he ought to feel, but didn't. Ah, loyalty. The line of his healing scar throbbed.

"He appears to have been killed by Cloud and his—"

"It doesn't matter," Tseng interrupted. He slid his legs off the bed, felt his wound protest. Ignored it. "We have work to do."


End file.
